Monday, August 15, 2011

Bad, Bad Neighbor

You might remember some of my past posts dealing with the assorted bad neighbors, I have had in the past. I suppose anyone that has moved 21 times (this isn't including any childhood moves) is destined to meet a few BAD neighbors. You may or may not remember the neighbor that sent her laundry and sewing to me daily via her seven year old. OR...the neighbor that told the strange men at her door that I was gone for the evening and they robbed us blind. OR...the neighbor that had the brat that shot the arrow into my kid's face. OR...the guy that called the cops because my friend parked on the street in front of MY house and he said he thought it was a burglar. AND last but not least is the next door neighbor that got drunk and pulled his Cadillac into my driveway hitting my 3 year old that was on his Big Wheel. (By the way...all of you that are having a stroke about my poor sentence structure...chill. Actually, I was going to say "bite me" but that seemed unfriendly)

Now that you are somewhat up to speed on my propensity to have crappy neighbors, let me tell you about my present neighborhood.

It started DAY ONE. While we were moving in we had a visit from what is our current BAD neighbor.

Again, you may or may not remember that I talked about the moving company out of Texas. They were the ones that insisted that all of our belongings would fit onto a 48 foot trailer. EVEN THOUGH I told them we would need a 53 foot truck. After 19 prior moves, wouldn't I know this. Why they don't listen, is any one's guess. After packing and unpacking the 48 foot truck, the mover man called in a smaller second truck to help. Upon arrival here this is what the big truck would have looked like.

This is exactly like the truck that brought us to Kansas, although
I was not in the mood for taking pictures as we moved in, so this generic photo
is so you can visualize the story that I am telling.

Now visualize, if you will, that a truck like this can not pull into a suburban driveway and must park on the street. Not only did the big truck have to park on the street but a smaller truck right behind it had to park on the street. Both trucks would have blocked the driveway which caused hubby and me to park our cars onto the street as well.

The day we moved in was July 1st and it was hotter than Hades. The moving guys were sweltering while working hard to get all of our belongings off the trucks and into the house. You had to know that they were hating us for aquiring all of our stuff. On top of that hatred came the loathing they felt for us when they realized that our house has three floors. I am sure, every time they asked where something went and I said the top floor, they surely wanted me to die a horrible death.

THEN...it happened. The guy next door came a-callin'. He didn't want our cars parked in front of his house. YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING??? Where would you like me to put the cars? (I had a thought where I wanted to put them) I was dumbfounded so I didn't argue the point. I moved both cars over to the next block until the moving van pulled out and I could get into the garage.

That is not the last of the problems we have had with neighbor guy. In fact, there is always something up his butt. (see..there I am being unfriendly again)

One of the more current problems is this. Neighbor guy had a small patch of dead grass in his yard. This little patch of deadness was about 1 foot by 1 foot. According to him, some fertilizer was spilled onto his lawn when our yard service was fertilizing our yard. While I am relatively sure it is a patch of Brown Patch fungus, neighbor guy wants our yard service to come, dig up the spot and put down a piece of sod.

As it happened, I didn't have to call my yard service about it because they had already heard from neighbor guy. Lawn service guy came to our door and said they were sure it was not a fertilizer burn but they would be glad to fix the little area to save further problems for us. He went on to say, he hadn't heard that many swear words within one sentence EVER. What made this even more SPECIAL is this guy's lawn is crap. He never fertilized or anything else, so why he cared if he had one bad spot in a whole yard of weedy, barely any real turf, kind of a yard, is beyond me.

It seems that the neighborhood, I live in seems to be rampant with bad neighbors. A couple of years ago the house that is about 4 or 5 houses from us had the distinction of having some of the worst neighbors in the neighborhood burn their house down. Yeah, its hard to top that one as far as being a really crappy neighbor.

The neighbors bought some fireworks to celebrate the 4th of July despite the fact they are illegal here. Thanks to the wood shake roofs in our neighborhood our homes are pretty much a tinder box waiting for a match. This house didn't have to wait long. The bad neighbors launched some rockets and the house went up in flames. The fire department arrived quickly enough but it turns out that dried wood shakes can take down a house in a manner of minutes.

I take comfort in knowing that everyone has had a bad neighbor at some point and it's not just me.
In fact, just lately there have been several articles concerning BAD neighbors.

Here is a bad neighbor story that went viral a couple of years ago. Just in case you missed it...

In Riverton, Utah there has been an ongoing fight between neighbors concerning a new home being built by Darrin Wood. Wood started building his home in 2005 on a small lot on a hill. Because the lot required some excavation the neighbors were concerned that this would cause problems with their homes foundations and therefore asked Wood to have some soil testing done. Wood maintained that those tests had been done by the previous owner of the lot but the city sided with Stan Torgerson, the neighbor.

After spending $3000 for the test and being delayed for four months, Wood proceeded with the building of his new house.

The next confrontation came when a month and a half into construction Torgerson and yet another family, the Eastons, complained to the city that the new house was obstructing their view of the mountains. Wood complained that the city of Riverton had already approved the plans and while technically it was about a foot above code, he believed that after final excavation that it would be within the requirements.

Woods next step was to install some creative roof vents that he is calling an artistic cactus. His neighbors believe it to be a hand giving them the finger.

Again the Torgersons and Eastons called the city. It turns out there is no code that says that Wood couldn't keep the vents.

According to Snopes the Torgersons and Eastons have apologized for being difficult and Woods removed the cactus/finger.

When I was doing the research about bad neighbors, I ran across a web site where people write in about their own bad neighbors and seek answers on how to get revenge. You can go to this web site and read some of the suggested "get even" ideas. These suggestions all came from one very creative guy who seemingly has a lot of ideas about dealing (or being) a bad neighbor.

There are a couple of fun things to do. You might be able to ascertain that I have had some REALLY bad neighbors.

If you have poison ivy or oak, put rubber gloves on and grab a handful of leaves, rub them on their door handles. Be sure to toss out the gloves and wash your hands.

If they have external phone cords, shove a pin through the cord and cut it off at both ends. Rub the covering back over the holes. It is invisible and will require that they replace the phone cord AFTER a lengthy search to ascertain the problem.

Maple leafs in the gas tank are fun if you can do it, push it down with a stick until it cannot be seen, the next fill up should bring it into the gas tank. This will not destroy their engine but it will suck up against the fuel intake and stall their car randomly. This was done to me and it drove me insane.

Limburger cheese on their exhaust manifold, if you can get there, is also fun. Limburger cheese on their tailpipe also works. The can NEVER get rid of the smell.

If there are any gaps under their door, get a small mouse from a pet store (make it a brown one... a white one gives away that someone did it and might bring you problems). Slip it under their door in the middle of the night.

Turn your speakers to face the wall and, whenever they start, put on Iron Butterfly's Inna-Gadda-da-Vida at full volume... the long version. I have actually forced neighbors to stop with this.

A drop of gel superglue in their keyholes is also fun. So is super gluing quarters to the sidewalk in front of their doors.

Put random white powdery substances in baggies, tied as the drug users do, and drop them on their doorstep (wear gloves so they cannot fingerprint it). This will drive them bugnuts

I am sincerely hoping that this person isn't the guy that lives next door. Please, please, don't let it be him.

The Good for the day..After neighbor guy had the little patch put in by the lawn service it looked so nice he hired them to take care of the rest of his lawn. Now his yard is looking pretty good. That certainly was a happy ending for an otherwise annoying story.

The Bad for the day...

The Weird for the day...Odd coincidence...I was working on this post last Thursday when my Internet went down. HMMMM...what is that about you say? I have AT&T Uverse so when my Internet failed so did my phones, and my television reception. I called ATT and get the quick response (sarcasm) that they would be out Saturday. Saturday comes and the ATT guy tells me that the neighbors dog has chewed thought the fiber-optic cable, so he installed new cable and we are back on. Well...guess what? Within about 3 hours, that damn dog came out and chewed through the new cable. I called ATT back and they tell me that they don't have anyone available until Monday (today). I have had my computer up for about 10 minutes. If you don't hear from me again, just assume the dog had lunch on my cable.

13 comments:

bodaciousboomer
said...

OMG! Your best post ever! And so timely for me. We LOATHE our neighbors on three sides. Side 1- Lives the bitch who gave us the name of the woman who dog sat the pack last summer and almost killed them, costing us over $1500. Side 2- The man who reneged on paying his part of the fence rebuild.Side 3- The asshole who placed his spinkler 5' in the air and runs it full blast so the dogs can't go outside without getting soaked.

How did you and I get this lucky to have so many bad neighbors all at the same time? I could have added two other stories that happened in the last couple of weeks that had me ready to explode but I felt that it was starting to sound pathetic and whiney on my part. There are days I just want to move into the woods and live like Thoreau.

I feel for you. Nothing is worse than having a bad neighbor. It can turn a dream home into a nightmare! We have an old bitty across the street who cusses if you park across from her home. That's right - ACROSS the street - you can't park there, because she has the RIGHT to back up as far as she wants and that means your car can't be there. Lol.

What is with people and parking. If the street allows parking then .....IT ALLOWS PARKING. I find it interesting that my neighbor goes apesh** if anyone parks in front of his house but they have cars in front of ours all the time.

Bad neighbors make for funny stories after you move. Because I tend to be non-confrontational most of the bad neighbors don't realize that I think/thought they are/were bad neighbors. My newest trick is to duck behind cover if I see them headed my way. They have to catch me to complain about whatever is ticking them off. See no neighbor, hear no neighbor.

We had a bad neighbor when we built our first house, he complained about us building. The city made him build a fence because his yard was full of crap, and we had to finish it because he was only required to cover the back yard. He was such a jerk that we finished it on the property line, and he wasn't able to use his driveway. He didn't live there, he just used it to store his crap, we called him "Crappy Old Man".

I love the name "Crappy Old Man". What a jerk. Nothing is worse than living next door to someone that has no pride in their home.

As a realtor I get to see a lot of that kind of thing. I sold a house once that the new buyers (my clients) wanted to put up a fence and the guy next door would not let them bump up to their existing fence. The jerk wanted them to put a whole new fence right next to his rather than have a shared fence like most people do. So my people had a new survey done and it turned out that the jerk's fence was encroaching by about 4 ft into my clients yard. Ha ha. My clients put up a new fence and took their 4 ft back. Sometimes karma is a beautiful thing.